Temple Veil

Greetings to all,

We hope all of you are having an enjoyable and relaxing summer, and keeping cool in all of this record breaking heat around the northern hemisphere. On our end, this summer has been anything but a vacation, as we are in the middle of the heaviest tour schedule of our lives. We’ve been traveling and performing nonstop all over the country, hitting up favorite spots along the way as well as discovering new places we never even knew existed; all the while, enjoying every single second of every day. Honestly, the only thing that bums us out is how little time we’ve had to connect with and build our online community, but it’s been so amazing to connect with so many of you out on the road.

A couple of nights ago we were sharing a meal with a pastor, as we often do before or after our church performances, and he asked us this question: “Do you consider yourselves a successful artist?” This question brought up a much bigger question. What is success? In the music industry, success is looked at in a variety of ways. According to the record industry, success is measured in things like album sales, ticket sales, ticket prices, merchandise sales, online and digital sales, Billboard charts, Grammy awards, and so on. While artists always strive to improve in these areas, are these really the key factors in making a music career successful?

Having been down the record industry driven road before, we had to ask ourselves: Is selling a lot of albums really a success when you’re in six figures of debt to a record label to produce and market that album? Is having a huge turnout at a show really a success when the ticket sales still can’t cover the fuel and maintenance it takes to get your entourage of buses and semis full of equipment to that event? We’ve come to a point in our career where we’ve gotten over having stars in our eyes, and define our career success in music in a way that anyone should define success in any career.

Success is not always found in the dollar amount or the social status, but always in the provision. In other words, do you have what you need when you need it? Provision can come in so many forms other than money. Just recently, our tour van was in desperate need of new tires. At the same time, there was a family death in the band, and the money we had set aside for tires, needed to go towards airfare to the funeral and back. So then, what about the tires? A tire shop in MS, who believed in what we are doing, put a brand new set of $600 tires on the van. Did we have the money? No. But did we have the provision? Yes. So was it success? Absolutely.

Regardless of what we do, and where and when we do it, we all ask ourselves at some point if we are successful at what we are doing. The next time you question your own success in your career, don’t question the scale no matter how big or small; instead, question the balance of the scale. Do you have the provision you need to balance the needs that you have? Not necessarily the provision you want, but the provision you need? And most importantly do you know who your Provider is?

Brysson
DeRock

~Temple Veil